Cisco has confirmed that it has laid off about 500 workers, which it says is less than 1 percent of its workforce. The company referred to it as a "limited restructuring" effort.

All Things D's John Paczkowski reported, "Cisco’s workforce of about 73,000 is a few employees lighter today after a small round of layoffs earlier this week. On Tuesday, Cisco sacked about 500 workers in one of those occasional 'realignment' efforts."

Bloomberg quoted Cisco spokesperson Karen Tillman, who said, "We routinely review our business to determine where we need to align investments based on growth opportunities. This week, Cisco performed a limited restructuring that will impact approximately 500 employees."

NetworkWorld's Jim Duffy who first reported the story, added, "Sources say officials involved in Cisco's alliance with EMC and other data center business development initiatives have been affected. Cisco would not confirm that."

BusinessInsider's Julie Bort commented, "There's also unconfirmed rumors that the layoffs include three of Cisco's top EMC business alliance execs, Cisco blogger Brad Reese reports. That would make sense. Cisco has had a strained relationship with EMC ever since its subsidiary, VMware, bought a startup called Nicira for $1.26 billion last year. Nicira makes 'software defined networking' products, an upstart technology that promises to disrupt Cisco's bread-and-butter business, switches and routers. SDN is a new way to control networks, and it allows companies to buy less expensive networking gear and less of it. Cisco is known for its premium, higher-priced gear."